


Assassin

by BellumGerere



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Multi, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4165818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellumGerere/pseuds/BellumGerere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was a killer, was the best they'd ever seen / I'd steal your heart before you ever heard a thing / I'm an Assassin and I had a job to do / Little did I know that girl was an Assassin too...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ordinary Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of a fic I worked on from 2009-2012 and never finished. Updates will be sporadic.

**** Part One: Crossroads  
Chapter One: Ordinary Night  
Alice Brandon

_“You get in, you get done and then you get gone  
You never leave a trace or show your face: you get gone”_

_-John Mayer, “Assassin”_

Killingsworth Road was deserted that night, an abnormality for the pathetically small town of Amber Falls, Washington. Usually the place was crawling with people looking to get drunk, as the street housed most of the city’s bars, not to mention other various hotbeds of sin. Locals made a killing off of tourists from nearby Seattle and students from Edgeport College, just one town over. And I made a killing off the locals.

Branching off of Killingsworth, in between a nightclub and a shut-down-for-“health-violations” whorehouse was a little strip of concrete known as Murder Alley. The locals named it that, because most of the country’s homicides over the last couple years had taken place there. As a result, it had become notorious and was largely avoided, which was convenient for me. Less people messing with my work ultimately results in a lower body count.

On that particular night, the temperature was low, and my legs, bare under a long black coat, were covered in goose bumps. A few more minutes in the biting wind and I wouldn’t be able to feel them at all. My breath was a cloud of mist around me, hands—gloved, of course—shoved deep into my pockets, and short dark hair hidden completely under a hat. The thought that I wouldn’t leave behind any evidence didn’t stop me from biting my lip in anticipation. The moments before were always the worst part. After, I could return to my home in the world’s shittiest apartment building and fuck my partner and put the whole thing out of my mind, lock it deep away in the recesses of my subconscious. Before, though, while I stand there and wait, it’s impossible not to think about it. Especially taking into consideration tonight’s targets: Mike Newton and Tyler Crowley, acquaintances and coworkers of Rosalie Hale.

How ironic, I thought to myself, that someone would put out a contract on people I was so familiar with in high school. Those born in Amber Falls rarely ever leave it, with a few exceptions. I would have been gone years ago had it not been for certain…things. It wasn’t at all a surprise, though. The two of them had been your typical douchebag jocks. Right before I dropped out, there had even been rumors going around that they had raped some of the cheerleaders at a party I hadn’t attended. I still saw them around town occasionally, and I had no reason to believe anything about them had changed, especially if they were stupid enough to meet me here because they thought they were getting some.

And speaking of getting some…I blinked and there they were, coming into the mouth of the alley, laughing raucously and making crude jokes, likely at my expense. Normally this would have bothered me, but I was amused as well, thinking they would finally get what they deserved. I stepped out to meet them and a nearby streetlight illuminated my face, throwing sapphire eyes and sunken cheeks and ivory sin into sharp relief. They stopped in their tracks, staring at me.

“Ali?” Mike asked in disbelief. I pressed my lips together, trying to suppress a grin. They looked at me for a moment, and then both of them burst out laughing.

“See, this is where you end up when you drop out at sixteen,” he sniggered.  Tyler, still laughing too hard to speak, nodded in agreement. I allowed a smirk to tease up the side of my mouth. Like they had any clue why I dropped out of high school. Only one other person did, and he’d gone and graduated anyway, to keep up appearances. The last thing we needed was for people to wonder why we dropped out at the same time.

“Yeah, Ali, where’s your baby?” Tyler choked out. I gritted my teeth behind the grin. The downside of dropping out by myself was rumors like that. This particular one had been circling for years, but it never failed to make me angry.

“Sorry, boys, no baby here,” I replied, trying not to let on how angry I actually was. The plan always relied on them believing I was willing. “But I do have something for you.” My hand left my pocket and undid the top button on my coat—carefully, not revealing too much skin, just enough to get them interested. And interested they were. Between the button and my already-bare legs, they were practically salivating.

“This way.” I beckoned with a gloved hand to a door into the abandoned building. It used to be locked up tight, but that was easy to fix for someone small enough to crawl through broken windows. About a year ago, realizing it would make our job a lot easier, I broke in and fixed up one of the rooms—which really didn’t amount to much more than clean sheets on the bed and a few convenient places to stash weapons, but it was more than enough to suit out needs.

I glanced over my shoulder to see if they were following, and wasn’t surprised to see that they were silently arguing over who got to go first. I sighed internally. Nothing about them had changed.

“Boys,” I interrupted smoothly, resting one hand on the door frame. “I know it doesn’t look it, but trust me, there’s plenty to go around.” Something lit in their eyes, and I silently thanked whatever deity might be out there that I wouldn’t actually have to fuck them. After that, though the followed me up the stairs without complaint.

Now came the hard part—deciding which one of these assholes deserved to die first. Without looking, I reached behind me and grabbed the first hand I encountered. I pulled him into the room and shut the door, then turned to face him. Mike. So be it.

“We can do whatever you want,” I informed him in clipped tones, “as long as the coat doesn’t come off.” He nodded, looking a little disappointed, and pushed me onto the bed.

It always made me nervous when they immediately tried to take control. A thousand questions ran through my mind, mainly “what if I’m not able to get to my weapon and then something really bad happens?” I was strong, but not exactly in an advantageous position. What if I couldn’t push him off? It looked like I wasn’t going to have to worry about that, though. He was so busy trying to get off his own clothes that he barely paid any attention to me.

I reached under the pillow as he crawled towards me, aiming for the sliver of space between the headboard and the mattress. Hopefully it looked natural, like I wasn’t doing anything other than bracing myself for what he surely thought was going to change my life. It was almost in my grasp, if I could just reach a little—there. I had it. Now if he would move a bit closer, enough for me to catch him when he fell…

He dropped onto me, all his weight nearly crushing me, and I tossed the weapon to the side so as not to injure myself in the process of catching him. Shifting his body to someplace Tyler wouldn’t see it would be a bit difficult, but nothing I wouldn’t be able to hand. Even after so long doing this, some parts of it still surprised me.

Like how it seemed he barely even noticed when I slit his throat.


	2. The Sun Came Up Again

**** Part One: Crossroads  
Chapter Two: The Sun Came Up Again  
Alice Brandon

_“Always take the most unexpected route.”_

_-Jennifer Estep,_ Widow’s Web

 

Tyler was taken care of in much the same way, just a scant few minutes later. The routine had grown old over the years, but it never lost its excitement. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest, in time with the anxiety burning through my brain. The sun was going to rise soon, and I needed to be out of here before it did. I knew for a fact that the police searched this area every morning, albeit not very well. I had a contact who was closely associated with the force, and though she didn’t know why, she did a very good job of keeping my tracks covered.

With the bodies safely hidden (for now) in a nearby dumpster, I began the five-block trek back to where I’d parked my car, at the house of another contact in a nice neighborhood. If I timed it right, anyone who saw me driving would assume I was heading to work or meeting a friend for breakfast. They didn’t need to know that I was hiding the silver Volvo in a barely-occupied parking garage next to the run-down apartment complex that had the pleasure of being my base of operations. Few people had my address, and even fewer my phone number—only those who would be able to give me enough advance warning to get out of town if something did happen. I was difficult to find, and I preferred to keep it that way.

I drove slowly, keeping to the speed limit. One of the worst parts of killing was the accompanying paranoia over things like speeding tickets. If one of the cops happened to connect me with a sighting at Murder Alley, I was fucked. For this reason, I parked the car close to the door that led onto the fourth floor of mostly-deserted Amber Garden Apartments. Despite the trying-too-hard name, it was practically falling apart, with only three or four other apartments occupied over a span of seven floors, so it was unlikely anyone would ever see me coming home.

Trying not to wake up my partner, I closed the apartment door behind me and redid the locks, internally sighing in relief that I hadn’t been followed. The hovel I called home consisted of a living room, kitchen, and a short hallway branching off to two bedrooms and a bathroom. We technically didn’t need another bedroom, though I often retreated to it the day after, but we had no choice but to buy it, as it was all this particular building offered. Sometimes it was convenient, though. I frequently got upset after a difficult job, and would sequester myself for days.

I stepped into the tiny bathroom, practically having to stand in the shower to shut the door. Hanging on the back of it, on a hook, was a black dress, long-sleeved with a daisy-print skirt. I frowned. He almost never picked out clothes for me, not since I expressed my…intense dislike for it. If he felt like he could even suggest something, we must’ve been doing something important that day. I wondered idly what it was as I stripped down. It was unusual for him not to tell me.

Usually, when I got home, I avoided looking in the mirror, too afraid of seeing what I’d become. Today, though, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from myself. Short and thin, bottom ribs and hipbones protruding from pale skin. Dark hair, dark circles under my eyes. Unassuming. Suddenly I couldn’t get away from myself fast enough. I stepped into the shower and turned the water on, letting it scald my skin and relax my muscles. If only it could clean my mind.

When I stepped out, I ran headfirst into something—no, someone. A tall someone with bronze hair, skin as pale as mine, and amused green eyes. My partner in crime, quite literally.

“Edward,” I said, grinning. I could feel his eyes roving my body hungrily, although he wouldn’t dare try anything the morning after. It was clear to both of us that I was the one in charge.

“Alice.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. He was always oddly formal, even when I was standing in front of him completely naked. “Get all the blood off?”

“Physically.” I groaned. “He called me Ali.”

The smirk faded into a look of unbridled rage. “Did they really think they have the right to do that? God, if they weren’t already dead, I would kill them.” He pushed a hand through his hair, staring at the ground. “Fuck.”

Hey, I’m alright.” I ducked under him so that our faces were barely inches apart. “I promise. They won’t say it again.” A strangled laugh escaped his lips and then he was kissing me frantically. I wasn’t fooled, I knew he was just trying to get his mind off of things. We’d never been close in any romantic way, and we never would be. It was unlikely I’d ever fall in love with anyone. But that wasn’t to say we didn’t enjoy a good fuck every now and then.

I leaned away and reached for the towel I’d left on the counter, rubbing it over my chin-length hair. “Why don’t you tell me what that’s all about?” I pointed at the dress.

“Oh. That.” Which was exactly the kind of response I’d been dreading. “It’s nothing, really. I thought maybe we could go out today, and you could wear—”

“Stop with the bullshit. I’m not buying it.” I leveled a glare at him. “Why did you think you could do something I hate and get away with it? What is so horrifying that you felt like you had to lie to me about it?”

He knew there was no way out of this one, I could tell. “Look, you’re going to hate me for this, but…Rose invited us to lunch.”

I blinked a few times, sure I’d misheard him. He paused for a second. “And I already told her we would come.”

Of course he did. When it came to certain people, he had an inability to say no. I was not one of those people.

“Why would you do that? Do you really hate me that much?” Behind the anger, I was sure he could hear the slightest bit of teasing. It was hard for me to stay mad at him. How could I, when he’d abandoned all his plans for the future to help me survive?

He grinned. “For your information, I thought it would help you get closure. You never have to see her again if you don’t want to.” I leaned against the wall, pressing my lips together. No matter how you put it, he was right. Maybe it would help me to stop obsessing over everything that happened right before I dropped out.

“Fine. But I hope you know that I don’t like this at all.”

“I know. But it’ll be good for you.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “By the way…you missed a spot.”

“What?” I twisted around to look at myself in the mirror and there it was: a small spot of rusted red, just below my collarbone.

“Fuck.”


	3. Love Song For No One

**** Part One: Crossroads  
Chapter Three: Love Song For No One  
Jasper Hale

_“Searching all my days just to find you_  
I’m not sure who I’m looking for  
I’ll know it when I see you”

_-John Mayer_

Rosalie was in a mood today. I could tell because every time I tried to ask her where we were going, she grunted and turned the radio up a little bit louder. Normally she was overly talkative on car rides, like she was allergic to silence. Today, though, she’d barely made a sound as she picked up me and all my worldly belongings from Edgeport College, shoved us in her BMW, and drove away. It was a forty-five minute trip back to Amber Falls, and we’d spent over half of it in this game of back-and-forth annoyance.

I hadn’t tried pushing her too hard, though. My brain was too fried to care. I’d just gotten out of my last exam, and had only one semester left until I graduated with a bachelor’s in history. It had always fascinated me, especially the Civil War, since my mother’s family had been from Texas and she was also a historian. I would have been graduating in a few days if I hadn’t fucked up so badly first semester of my freshman year. I spent too much time partying, failed all my classes but one, and was subsequently put on academic probation. Obviously I’d cleaned up my act a bit, but the memories still itched in the back of my mind, and I doubted they’d ever go away.

It was funny how Rose, nineteen and just finishing up her freshman year at Puget Sound, had become the caretaker in the family after my mother died. Everyone thought that my father would finally be a parent for once, but no, Peter Hale was too busy kissing other people’s babies as mayor of Amber Falls to worry about his own. So Rosalie, not even sixteen at the time, had stepped up. She was the one who drove to the hospital at three in the morning when I had alcohol poisoning. She’d somehow gotten our father to attend meetings with my academic advisors when I was on the brink of expulsion. When mom died, she sat up with me for hours while I sobbed, thinking it was somehow all my fault.

Nowadays, though, I could barely even get her to talk to me, which seemed to me the ultimate irony. Here I was, twenty-two and still expecting her to be the mature one, and she was giving me the silent treatment. I suppose I couldn’t expect that much of her, though. She was, after all, only nineteen.

“Rose.” No response. “Rosalie.” Still nothing. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. She could be impossible on days like this. “Rosie.”

She only took her eyes off the road for a split second to throw a glare my way. “You know I hate being called that.”

“Well, it got you to talk to me, didn’t it?”

“Fuck.” She brushed a lock of hair in front of her face, but I caught a glimpse of a smile. We never could stay mad at each other for long.

“So where are we going?”

Just like that, the smile was gone, and she refused to take her eyes off the road. “I don’t want to talk about.”

“Come on.” She didn’t make a sound. “Rose, please?”

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Alright, I’ll tell you, but you’re probably not going to like it.”

Well, that was certainly reassuring. “You know I won’t get mad at you. You can tell me.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath, and in the seconds in between I wondered what could possibly be horrible enough that she thought she couldn’t tell me. “We’re going to meet some people I knew from high school. For lunch.”

The admission stunned me into silence. I knew that after she turned sixteen, high school became a living hell for her, though I couldn’t possibly imagine why. She was pretty and popular, All-American cheerleader-squad perfection. She had so many friends I couldn’t count them, and every time I visited home at least one of them was hanging around. The only thing I could think of bad enough to ruin high school for her, besides our mother’s death, which had already happened, was a bad boyfriend. Or friend. Or both.

“Are they the people who ruined your life?” I asked, not bothering at all with caution. She probably knew what I was thinking anyway.

“No. Besides, if they ruined my life, why would I go to see them?” Admittedly, she had a point. Common sense had never been my strong suit, as exemplified by my repetitive drinking binges freshman year, which had eventually landed me in the hospital. Rose had always been the one with all the common sense, even if it turned out later I was smarter than I looked.

“Right. So where are we going, exactly?”

“Here.” I was so distracted by her sudden mood swings that I didn’t even notice we’d pulled into the parking lot of a local Italian restaurant. She stopped the car, reaching into the backseat to grab her purse, and I noticed she was wearing a dress under her coat. “Am I underdressed?” I asked, looking down at my ratty t-shirt and jeans. Hey, in my defense, no one really cares about…well, anything during finals week.

She laughed, and I was glad to hear a break in the tension. “No, I think I’m overdressed. I don’t know, I just…my life has been so much better since I left, and I want everyone to know.” She shrugged. “Yeah, I realize it’s stupid.” But it wasn’t. She’s spent the entire year away from Amber Falls, even winter and spring breaks, and she was better off for it. She even looked better—happier, and she didn’t need a dress to make it obvious.

We walked inside, and I stood by the door awkwardly while Rose gave them our name. I wondered who we were meeting, and why she was even bothering with this, three years too late. As the hostess led us to our booth, I looked around, trying to see if anyone I recognized as a friend of Rose’s was here. Not like I could actually recognize any of her friends.

She noticed me looking around. “You won’t know them. Everything happened before I decided to be miserable.” The side of her mouth quirked up, but I could tell she was still sad as we slid into the booth. “Any minute, though.”

So we sat in silence, waiting for them, for a full twenty minutes before the bell on the door sounded. “Just like her to be late,” Rose muttered, turning around. I strained to see over my shoulder, but I was on the wrong side to even try looking at the door, so I stared at the empty bench awkwardly.

“Sorry we’re late,” a smooth alto voice crooned. “Traffic was killer.”

I turned to the side. Standing next to Rose, almost as if she’d materialized out of thin air, was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and she was staring straight at me.

“Hi,” she said, voice dripping sex appeal, hand extended. “I’m Alice.”


	4. My Stupid Mouth

_“We bit our lips_  
_She looked out the window_  
 _Rolling tiny balls of napkin paper_  
 _I played a quick game of chess with the salt and pepper shaker_  
 _And I could see clearly_  
 _An indelible line was drawn_  
 _Between what was good, what just slipped out and what went wrong_ ”

_-John Mayer_

Her dress, black with a print of daisies on the skirt, stopped midthigh, and provided an odd contrast to the “fuck-me” look in her eyes. In my lust-addled mind she was all legs and high heels and pale skin and dark hair. I took her hand, muttering “Jasper Hale,” barely even able to look her in the eye. She didn’t even glance at Rose, I noticed, before she slid into the booth across form me and shrugged off her long black coat, which had been open over the dress.

“If you say anything I don’t want to hear, I will _not_ hesitate to shoot you,” she threatened. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was supposed to take her seriously. She looked like the ultimate picture of severity, but something in the set of her full lips led me to believe otherwise.

“Ali,” the man who was sitting down next to her scolded, and she smirked. “Say too many things like that and they might start to believe you.” Rose, who I noticed had tensed suddenly, relaxed a little. She gave the man a close-lipped smile, chuckling halfheartedly, as he turned to face me. “Sorry about my friend here. Sometimes she forgets that not everyone shares her sense of humor.”

“It’s no problem.” I shook his hand and glanced over at Alice, who was intensely studying the wine menu. “And you are…?”

“Oh! Forgive that social gaffe.” He seemed far more conversationally inclined than his companion, and the more he talked, the more Rose seemed to calm down. “I’m Edward Cullen.”

I offered a cursory “nice to meet you,” but as he and Rose continued the conversation, I found my eyes being drawn back to Alice. When the waitress came to take our drink order and she asked for a glass of wine I was suspicious, to say the least, but the ID she showed was accepted without a second glance, even though she didn’t look a day over nineteen. It had to be fake, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind. I knew I wasn’t exactly helping the situation much, since I was supposed to be Rose’s wingman, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from this enigmatic woman if I tried.

“So Jasper.” I blinked and looked over at Edward, taking a drink of water to try and hide my embarrassment. Hopefully she hadn’t seen me staring. I was more than a little unsettled by the look in his intensely green eyes. “What do you do?”

“I—” It took me a moment to realize what he meant. “I go to Edgeport. For American history. I’ll graduate in December.” I took another long drink. Alice seemed to be paying attention—she’d finished her wine and was running a finger across the rim of the glass. Her grey eyes were fixed on a point somewhere above my shoulder. “What about you?”

They turned to each other and exchanged a loaded glance. Under the table, Alice’s foot brushed mine, and Rose gripped my leg tightly. “Neither of us are going to school—for now, at least. We got offered jobs at my father’s practice in Forks pretty early on.”

Nepotistic, I thought, but I really had no place to judge. My father had offered me the same thing shortly after my mother’s death. “Forks, huh? That’s quite the commute. It’s what, half an hour from here?”

“Something like that.” I must have let some of that judgement color my tone—it was the only thing that could explain the sudden change in his demeanor. “But we couldn’t decide what we wanted to study, and it seemed as good an opportunity as any.”

I was about to respond, but was cut off by Rose’s phone ringing, which earned her a slow, deliberate eyebrow raise from Alice. “I’ve got to take this,” she mumbled, excusing herself. Edward followed a moment after, saying something about getting a drink from the bar.

And just like that, Alice and I were left alone.

We spent a moment in relatively awkward silence, eyeing each other when we weren’t looking. I took slow sips of water and she continued fiddling with her wine glass, only stopping when the waitress brought her another and she drank it just as quickly as the first one. The blankness on her face made me anxious to break the silence, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to say.

“I’m sorry about that hive-mind bullshit he keeps pulling,” she said suddenly, still looking over my shoulder. She sounded mildly annoyed and I wasn’t sure why she was even apologizing when she was the one getting the short end of the stick.

“Sounds like he should be the one apologizing.” She let out a surprised chuckle, finally meeting my eyes.

“Maybe. But I get the impression I was making you uncomfortable with my silence.”

“You weren’t. Not really.” That was an outright lie, but if she caught it she chose not to comment. “What would you have said differently, then?”

She took a moment to think about it, chewing on her full bottom lip. I noticed the necklace she wore—three silver hearts, all intertwined, inlaid with diamonds. It seemed expensive for someone so young, not to mention the rest of her attire was less than ostentatious. I wanted to ask where it had come from, but it seemed too personal to bring up at a first meeting.”

“I knew what I wanted to study. Exactly how I wanted things to play out. That whole ‘undecided’ thing only applies to him. But then again, he actually got to graduate high school. He had plans for the future. He had room to be undecided.”

“And you didn’t graduate?” I was surprised; I’d pegged her as a student when she walked in, but all my expectations were being subverted.

“I dropped out at sixteen to support my family. Some serious shit happened, and there really wasn’t any other choice.”

The silence resumed. The waitress brought another glass of wine.

“What were you going to study?” She raised her eyebrows, glass frozen halfway to her mouth. She clearly hadn’t been expecting the question.

“Fashion design.” A humorless laugh. “Preferably somewhere in New York. It seems ridiculous now.” She took a long drink, and it felt like all I could do was watch her. With every word, she became more and more captivating—and I wasn’t even the one drinking. “A lot has changed.”

I heard an angry voice, and a moment later Edward rounded the corner, brow furrowed, phone pressed to his ear. He ended the call and turned to Alice, ignoring me completely. “We need to go,” he said shortly, pulling out his wallet and tossing a twenty on the table, enough to cover the wine. Alice looked at me apologetically as she was pulled away, and I could do nothing but sit there, completely unsure what had just happened.


	5. No Such Thing As The Real World

" _Welcome to the real world" she said to me_  
_Condescendingly_  
 _"Take a seat_  
 _Take your life_  
 _Plot it out in black and white_ "

_-John Mayer_

"So," Edward said as we drove home from the dinner, "exactly how much of our life stories did you tell him?"

I sighed and looked out the window, watching the rain pelt the road. He was always like this. Ever since we'd…entered into this profession, he'd become increasingly closed off. I knew for a fact he never even talked to anyone besides me and his brother—well, except when we picked up our targets' names at dead drops, if that could be considered talking. He was definitely more paranoid than me, but it was for good reason; thanks to his family's reputation in this area, he was also more easily recognizable. If this whole thing went south, he had more to lose.

"Nothing incriminating, if that's what you want to know." He gripped the wheel tighter than normal. When we had to stop at a light in the middle of downtown, he braked a bit too quickly. "I told him I didn't graduate and you did, but that's it. Nothing that would link you to…" I waved my hand around in the stagnant air between us. "Any of this."

He relaxed visibly and let out a sigh. "Good. But you should still figure out how to talk less."

"You know me; after I've had a couple glasses of wine—"

"After you've had a couple glasses of  _anything_  you're exactly as lucid and aware as you are sober. SO nice try, but maybe you should come up with a better excuse."

We didn't sleep that night. Edward was too busy worrying for no reason, which was apparently something he couldn't do quietly. He paced back and forth, muttering to himself, for so long that eventually I gave up on sleep and settled on the ragged, threadbare couch to watch him, beer in hand.

"Were they the ones you were talking to on the phone earlier?" I asked when the sound of his footsteps on the carpet became too much to bear, about six drinks in. The thought of any of them talking to him directly made my stomach clench. Unconsciously, my hand reached up and traced along the raised skin on the back of my neck. When I had first gotten us into this mess, my hair had been cut in a short bob. I had to grow it out after that, though. The scars were angry and thick; they would have drawn too much attention. Still, I often reflexively tugged up the collar of my jacket when I went on jobs, just in case.

"Yes." He noticed the expression on my face, finally, and he sat down next to me. "It's nothing you need to worry about—well, it's the location of the next dead drop. Something to worry about. But nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose." He sounded bitter.

"I don't think dead drops are anything to worry about." I tipped my head back so I was staring at the ceiling. The only light in the apartment came from a lamp in the corner, and its bulb was burning out at that. He enver thought to replace them until they'd been out for days. He didn't think it mattered; it just made us more difficult to find. "You do something for three years, you start to get used to it."

"Ali, you  _can't_ think like that," he said, grabbing my shoulder tightly. I pulled away, but there wasn't much I could do to escape his penetrating stare. "You can't let it become normal. It becomes normal, you get sloppy. You get sloppy…"

He stopped, drawing a finger across his throat. I nodded in response. In the back of my mind, I knew he was just concerned about my well-being— _our_ well-being, because if one of us goes the other would surely follow. They viewed us as a team, though it always seemed to be me doing all the dirty work. But considering he was the one who helped me cover up the initial catastrophe, clean up the evidence, lay low until the whole thing blew over, I needed to protect him. If need be, I would take a bullet for him, though I prayed it would never actually come to that.

"I don't. Trust me, I don't think I'll ever consider this normal." It took all my willpower to stop my voice from quivering. I was nineteen. I would've been going to college. Having a normal life with a normal job and not trying to stir up paranoia with random murders every couple of weeks. Being bitter about it wouldn't get me anywhere, though. "You don't have to worry about me. I've still got my eye on the prize. Once he's dead, they let us go. Right?"

Another sigh. "I hope so." But neither of us would exactly be surprised if they didn't keep their word. We were some of the best they had, and we knew it. More than likely, they weren't going to let us go that easily.

"I'm going to bed," he exclaimed suddenly. I didn't look down from the staring-at-the-ceiling position I'd resumed, and a moment later the door clicked shut behind him. I felt as if I had nowhere to go, even though it wasn't true. We had separate bedrooms. There was a small kitchen, shitty but functional. Hell, I could've even left the damn apartment if I wanted to—but now, the panic had set in. Edward's attitude was affecting my own, and I felt more than unreasonably anxious.

So I took a bath. In a way, it was ridiculous. It only made me more of a sitting duck. The effects of soap and water on my guilty conscience, though, couldn't be understated. I did my best to let myself relax in the water, but all I ended up doing was scratching too hard at my arms and legs. Ever since that first fateful night, I hadn't felt like I belonged in my own skin. The scratching happened more frequently than I would've liked to admit. Sometimes it just seemed like something inside my body wanted out.

Afterwards, I climbed into bed naked with wet hair and slept through the day. My dreams were incoherent and Edward rapped on my door around eight in the evening, apparently concerned for my health. I brushed off his questions, ignoring him even when he got angry with me for doing so. The apartment was becoming claustrophobic. Another few days of lockdown seemed like the worst thing for me now.

After making sure the door to my room was locked—I didn't want to be disturbed—I changed into jeans and a dark blue top and put on some minimal makeup. Simple. Unobtrusive. A black beanie pulled over my hair. I opened the window and slipped out onto the fire escape, feeling a bit like a teenager sneaking out after curfew. In a way, that was what I was doing, breaking our self-imposed lockdown. On any other day I would've felt guilty about it.

But today I felt restless, irritated. I needed to breathe. I needed out.


	6. Just Soldier On With It

I ended up at a bar right across the street from the local college, pulling my leather jacket tightly around me. There was a free table in the back that I slipped into, hoping that no one would notice me as I ordered drink after drink to calm my nerves. That was one thing they’d done right when we entered their service—completely new identities. Expertly forged drivers’ licenses and birth certificates. I wasn’t going to ask how they got us into every official record we needed to be in. Something gave me the feeling I didn’t actually want to know.

The room itself was dark and slightly hazy, and I blended din almost seamlessly with the horde of college-aged kids crowding the place. Maybe ‘kids’ was a bad term; at least half of them had to be older than me, probably more. But none of them had seen what I’d seen, done what I’d done. This was my third year on my own, and I already felt more world-weary than any nineteen-year-old should be.

I heard a murmured greeting and then someone slid into the booth next to me, far too close for my liking. He had close-cropped dark hair and a beer in his hand. I could tell he was drunk; I’d seen the signs too often on myself to recognize them immediately on someone else. The fact that he seemed roughly my age made me a little nervous. If he turned out to be someone I’d known, I would just have to hope he was too wasted to actually recognize my face.

“Buy you a drink?” His voice sounded off-puttingly lucid. He wasn’t mumbling, wasn’t slurring his words. I turned to the side, hoping the low light and the hair escaping from my beanie would shield me.

“Already got one.” I motioned to the pint glass in front of me, and his face fell visibly. Surprisingly, he didn’t push it, just got up and walked away. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. I’d had similar encounters at this and may other bars that had turned out far less pleasantly. Thankfully, Edward had insisted we both learn some basic self-defense moves, in case we ever got into trouble during a kill, though it had proved far more useful to me outside my job.

A sudden squeal of microphone feedback made me jump, reaching instinctively into my pocket for the blade I always carried. When I realized what it was, I felt completely ridiculous as I sat back and drained the rest of my drink. There were performers here several times a week. I usually tried to come other nights, when there were less people around who might recognize me, but I was in such a hurry to get out of the apartment that I hadn’t even thought about what day it was. But I was already there, several drinks in, and I definitely didn’t want to go home and face Edward yet.

I knew exactly how it would go. One of us would start yelling, the other would retaliate in kind, and after a few minutes Edward would hush me, regardless of who had actually gotten louder first. We’d go off to our separate rooms for a while, each engrossed in our own thoughts. Sometime the next day, we’d fuck and make up. All we had was each other; we couldn’t afford to waste too much time fighting.

A tap on the microphone made me look up, and while someone was adjusting and soundchecking, I stood and headed to the bar for another drink. The bartender served me without a second glance. This was one of the few places I actually frequented, so the sight of me was undeniably familiar. I took it from him and made my way back to the corner booth as quickly as possible. Being anywhere even remotely close to the center of the action made me nervous.

Someone cleared their throat into the mic. I looked up and was shocked to find myself staring at a familiar, unruly crop of blond hair.

“Hey,” he said with a lopsided smirk that made my stomach turn. “I’m Jasper. Though I’m sure most of you already knew that.” A wave of laughter swept through the room, along with some scattered applause. I wondered if he’d been at any of the small number of other nights I’d been here during live performances, though I wouldn’t have had any reason to notice if he had. “Well, I won’t waste time with introductions, then. Let’s get to it.”

He picked up a guitar from the stand next to him and started to play. I couldn’t help but notice now natural he looked. He was clearly in his element. I would have never been that comfortable in the spotlight. Then again, I’d grown accustomed to working at night, moving around in the shadows.

_All of the astronauts_  
_Champagne in plastic cups_  
 _Waiting for the big hero to show_  
 _Outside the door he stands_  
 _His head in his hands_  
 _And his heart in his throat_

He had a nice voice, too, and an even better stage presence, despite the fact that all he was doing was sitting on a stool. I could see several girls near the low wooden stage giving him come-hither glances. It made me oddly jealous, though I wasn’t sure why. Anyone could see he was attractive—that was especially obvious now. But I’d sworn off romantic relationships entirely when I became a killer. Even casual flings or one-night stands were too dangerous. Any of them could recognize me at a less-than-opportune moment. It was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, I had Edward for that.

Why, then, couldn’t I stop staring at his face?

_What can he tell ‘em now_  
_Sorry I let you down_  
 _Sorry it wasn’t quite true_  
 _But don’t get hung up on it_  
 _Just soldier on with it_  
 _And good luck with shooting the moon_

I couldn’t stay here any longer, not with him up there, looking like that. I needed to get out, find a different bar; home wasn’t exactly an option yet either. I finished the rest of my drink in one long swallow and stood, leaving the glass on the table. Hopefully, with my hat pulled low over my head and a very convenient distraction on stage, I would be able to sneak out unnoticed.

Any chances of that were ruined when he looked to the back of the room—and his eyes locked with mine.


End file.
